Sunday, September 06, 2015

Plagiarism in Filip Müller's Book

Author: Hans Metzner

Auschwitz Sonderkommando Filip Müller's book (Sonderbehandlung, 1979 in German; Auschwitz Inferno, 1979 in English) is quoted in numerous works on the mass murder machinery in Auschwitz. Yet, it is has to be treated very carefully as a historical source as in addition to some distortions it has also plagiarised earlier accounts.

Carlo Mattogno has pointed out that Müller's book has plagiarised some parts of the memoirs of Miklos Nyiszli (published in German in 1961), possibly also of Kurt Gerstein's report (previously published in German, e.g. in 1953), something that seems to have remained unnoticed in historiography. Of course, Mattogno's tedious mass production of utter nonsense on Auschwitz and his denial of well established atrocities released by extremist fringe publishers has not exactly helped to disseminate this view.

There is evidence that at least another source was worked into the book. When I prepared the rebuttal of Mattogno on gas introduction in the crematoria, I was puzzled by the corroboration between Pery Broad and Filip Müller that there had been six holes for gas introduction at the crematorium in Auschwitz main camp. Since the figure seems exaggerated, since Broad's report was published before Müller's book and since the latter was already known for plagiarism, this immediately raised the suspicion that both sources are not independent and that Müller's figure was in fact inspired by the Broad report.

This is confirmed by a further text comparison of both sources. The passage on gassing in crematorium 1 in Sonderbehandlung p. 58 - 63 is closely related to Broad's report (published in German in 1966 in Hefte von Auschwitz 9). Although it is possible that both could have witnessed the same gassing or the same kind of gassing (both arrived in Auschwitz in April 1942; according to Broad, he was assigned to the Political Department in June 1942; according to Müller, he was working in crematorium 1 from May - end of June 1942), it is unlikely that an SS man and a prisoner would be able to describe it from the same perspective and with such a large overlap independently from each other, even committing the same mistake on the number of gas openings.

Thus, Müller's book Sonderbehandlung is partly based on Miklos Nyiszli's memoir, Pery Broad's report, possibly Kurt Gerstein's report and perhaps other works as well. Obviously, something went seriously wrong here, if the book is supposed to be an autobiographical memoir, but also if it is considered as a novel.

Müller was one of most veteran Sonderkommando prisoners with about two month experience in crematorium 1 in Auschwitz main camp and about 1.5 years experience in the mass murder machinery in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In principle, he should have experienced
enough to write a whole book. The explanation that Müller is a false witness, who was not working at the crematoria at all, can be discarded because of his earlier testimonies in Kraus & Kulka's Tovarna na smrt in 1946, at the Auschwitz Garrison trial in 1947 and at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial in 1964. A more likely explanation is that a deteriorated memory, poor writing skills, linguistic limitations compared to the task to write a full book might have made him to go for other sources.

But before jumping to any conclusion, it should be noted that it is not clear that the plagiarising was committed by himself. According to Andreas Kilian ("Erinnerungsbericht: 'Sonderbehandlung'", accessed in 2007 on sonderkommando-studien.de) who talked to Filip Müller, the first two chapters (p. 9 - 141) were written in Czech in 1971/72, the remaining two (p. 143 - 281) in German. The Czech part had to be translated into German, but also the German part had to be thoroughly reworked given that Müller was not a fluent speaker. Kilian wrote that these chapters were "linguistically and literately reworked" by the editor Helmut Freitag. Hence, it's possible that his perhaps rather thin and little attractive manuscript was heavily retouched and "improved" with other sources in the course of the translation and editing process. To what extent he knew about the misconduct then, if he didn't do it himself, is another issue (he probably knew Nyiszli's memoir - "a few falsehoods have crept into the writing of Dr. Nyiszli"- that much we know). Even if it was done behind his back, it could have hardly escaped him that his book contained way more than what he brought down on paper. He also adapted a few, yet only a small fraction of the critical remarks in an interview by Claude Lanzmann, probably from 1980-81.

In any case, Müller's book should be used very carefully as a historical source given the extensive inspiration it drew from other sources.